Relationship between early and later developing numerical abilities

作为成年人，数字对我们做的几乎所有事情都很重要。我们的定量思维从何而来？布兰农博士和其他人之前的研究表明，非常小的婴儿可以仅根据数字来区分一组物品。尽管现在有大量的证据表明婴儿具有感知数字差异的基本能力，但我们还不清楚这些能力是否或如何与后来的数学认知相关。这个项目的重点是询问在人类发展早期出现的非语言数字能力是否作为学习数学的基础。为了回答这些问题，布兰农博士和她的研究小组开发了一种新的程序，可以量化婴儿个体识别数字差异的能力。这个过程包括向婴儿展示两组数字图像流。其中一个流的特征是每张图像中有固定数量的点；然而，图像在点的位置和大小上有所不同。另一幅图像具有两个交替的不同数值。婴儿更喜欢看变化的数值流，他们对变化的数值流的偏好程度取决于该数值流中两个值之间的比例。该项目将采用纵向设计来研究6个月大的婴儿的数字辨别能力与3.5岁和4.5岁的儿童的数字辨别能力和数学概念之间的关系。一大批6个月大的婴儿将首先在新的数字变化检测任务中进行测试。同样的婴儿将在9个月和18个月时接受各种非语言数字辨别任务的测试然后在3.5岁和4.5岁时接受语言和非语言数字任务的测试。这个项目将为理解婴儿和儿童后期的数字能力之间的关系提供基础。在婴儿期的基本数字能力和后来发展的数学能力之间建立联系，可以为识别早期数学困难和制定解决这些困难的干预措施提供重要途径。

Number is important for almost everything we do as adult humans. Where does our quantitative mind originate? Previous research by Dr. Brannon and others has shown that very young infants can discriminate sets of items based on number alone. Despite the abundance of evidence that now demonstrates that infants have rudimentary abilities to perceive numerical differences, we do not yet understand whether or how these capacities relate to later mathematical cognition. The focus of this project is to ask whether nonverbal numerical abilities that emerge early in human development serve as a foundation for learning mathematics. To answer these questions Dr. Brannon and her research team have developed a new procedure that quantifies an individual infant's ability to see numerical differences. The procedure involves presenting babies with two streams of numerical images. One of the streams features a constant number of dots in each image; however, the images vary in the location and size of the dots. The other image features two different numerical values that alternate. Infants prefer to look at the changing numerical stream and the magnitude of their preference for the changing stream depends on the ratio between the two values in that stream. The project will use a longitudinal design to look at the relationship between numerical discrimination abilities in 6-month-old babies and later numerical discrimination and math concepts in the same children at 3.5 and 4.5 years of age. A large sample of 6-month-old infants will first be tested in the new numerical change detection task. The same infants will be tested in a variety of nonverbal numerical discrimination tasks at 9 and 18 months and then in both verbal and nonverbal numerical tasks at 3.5 and 4.5 years of age. This project will provide a foundation for understanding the relationship between numerical abilities in infancy and later childhood. Establishing a link between rudimentary numerical abilities in infancy and later developing mathematical abilities could provide an important avenue for identifying early mathematics difficulties and developing interventions to address these difficulties.